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THE SPEECH 



OF 




HON. DON P. HALSKY 



ON THE BILL TO PROVIDE A STATUE OF 



ROBERT EDWARD LEE 



TO BE PLACED IN 



Statuary Hall in the Capitol at Washington, D. C 



DELIVERED IN THE 



SENATE OF VIRGINIA, FEB'Y 6, 1903. 



Reprint from Southern Historical Society Papers. 



RICHMOND: 

WM. ELLIS JONES, BOOK AND JOB PRINTER. 
1904. 



THE SPEECH 



HON. DON P. HALSEY 



ON THE BILL TO PROVIDE A STATUE OF 



ROBERT EDWARD LEE 



TO BE PLACED IN 



Statuary Hall in the Capitol at Washington, D. C. 



DELIVERED IN THE 



SENATE OF VIRGINIA, FEB'Y 6, 1903. 



Reprint from Southern Historical Society Papers. 



RICHMOND: 

WM. ELLIS JONES, BOOK AND JOB PRINTER. 
1904. 



VioA 



9j u*--i.5f«ir 



ROBERT EDWARD LEE. 



THE SPEECH OF HONORABLE DON P. HALSEY 



On the Bill to Provide a Statue of Robert Edward Lee to 
be Placed in Statuary Hall in the Capitol at Wash- 
ington, Delivered in the Senate of Virginia, 
February 6, 1903. 



[The preservation in these pages of this just and admirable expo- 
sition will be held in satisfaction, generally in this country, as well 
as in the broad domain of civilization. It would seem incredible to 
conceive of a dissentient to the meed due an exemplar of the noblest 
embodiment of the patriot, citizen and soldier, of which history has 
cognizance. — Ed.] 



Mr. President: 

In presenting the Bill now. under consideration, I did so from 
no desire to offend Northern sentiment, or to re-open old wounds 
now happily healed. Rather I did so from entirely opposite motives, 
for, believing that the feeling of good will between the sections is 
now greater than ever before, I considered this an opportune time 
for Virginia to accept the invitation so long held out to her by the 
Federal Government, and place in the National Valhalla, by the 
side of her Washington, the figure of him whom she deems to be 
his peer, and the fittest of all her sons for this high distinction, there- 
by showing her good feeling towards the reunited nation of which 
she is a part. 

Right glad am I to feel that those who are the truest exponents 
of the sentiment of the North, sustain me in my belief that in this 
era of good feeling the statue of Lee may be thus placed without 
justly exciting passions of sectional animosity or tirades of bitter 
comment. I did not hope, of course, that the idea would meet with 
the approval of everybody — the man does not live who can win 
universal approbation, no matter how well he may deserve it, and 
neither can a proposition to do any act, no matter how meritorious, 
be made without there being some who will disapprove, and, per- 
haps, condemn it. 



I recognize the fact that there are those in the North who are still 
irreconcilable as well as those in the South who are still " unrecon- 
structed " — to use that word in the Northern sense — but I take it 
also that the irreconcilable of the North are no more representative 
of the true sentiment of that section, than the unreconstructed are 
representative of the true sentiment of the South, and, therefore, I 
believe that the great heart of the North beats in unison with that 
of the South in honoring the memory of the great exponent of the 
chivalry and the glory and the true manhood of the South, just as I 
know that the South delights to honor the memory of his great ad- 
versaries, Lincoln and Grant, the first of whom pursued his course 
from a sense of duty as he saw it, "with charity towards all, and 
malice towards none," and the other of whom uttered those words — 
" Let us have peace," which fell like a benediction upon the sore 
and wounded spirit of the South in the hour of her greatest tribula- 
tion and distress. 

It is not as a representative of the spirit of secession that Virginia 
will offer the statue of Lee, nor as insisting that the right of seces- 
sion now exists. Lee was never a secessionist, but, on the contrary 
he called secession "anarchy," and said that if he owned the four 
million slaves in the South he would give them all to save the Union. 
In a letter written to his son in January, 1861, he used these words: 
"I can anticipate no greater calamity for the country than the dis- 
solution of the Union. It would be an accumulation of all evils we 
complain of, and I am willing to sacrifice everything but honor for 
its preservation." Again, in a letter to his sister, he said: " We 
are now in a state of war which will yield to nothing. The whole 
South is in a state of revolution into which Virginia, after a long 
struggle, has been drawn; and though I recognize no necessity for 
this state of things, and would have foreborne and pleaded to the 
end for a redress of grievances, real or supposed, yet in my own 
person I had to meet the question whether I should take part against 
my native State." After the war his whole influence was used in 
the direction of peace and reconciliation, and his last years were 
spent in teaching by precept and example the loyal acceptance of 
the verdict of the war, and the duty of building up the reunited 
country. It is not, therefore, as typifying the doctrine of secession 
that Virginia will offer his statue, but only as her superbest example 
of manhood, believing that " in perfection of character, as tested by 
struggle, victory and defeat, he is unequalled in history," and that, 
therefore, he, and no other, should be placed by the side of her 



majestic Washington, that together they may stand through the 
centuries as chiefs of our grand army of immortals. 

Neither do we offer Lee because we have no others worthy to 
stand in that congregation of the nation's great. It is rather from 
such a wealth of material that we must draw, that it constitutes an 
embarrassment of riches. Our Jefferson, our Mason, our Henry, 
our Madison, our Monroe, and our Marshall; all of these and many 
others are worthy of that great company, but having selected Wash- 
ington for our representative of the Revolutionary time, it seems 
that the most fitting selection we can now make is to take the other 
from a later time and that the most stirring period of our history, 
and surely none can be found more "worthy of this national com- 
memoration" than the stainless chieftain, Robert Edward Lee. 

Of the absolute legal right of Virginia to choose whom she will 
to represent her in statue in this National Pantheon, there can be no 
doubt whatever. The law gives palpable expression to this right in 
terms so clear and explicit that no room is left for any possible ad- 
verse construction. It is positively and unmistakably to the effect 
that every State shall have the right to select such two of its illus- 
trious dead for this purpose as "each State shall determine to be 
worthy of this national commemoration." It then goes on to pro- 
vide that these statues when so furnished by the several States 
"shall be placed in the old Hall of the House of Representatives, 
in the Capitol of the United States, which is hereby set apart, or so 
much thereof as may be necessary, as a National Statuary Hall." 
There is no provision in the law giving the authority to the Presi- 
dent or anyone else, to either accept or reject these statues, and 
passing by the question of whether Virginia was in or out of the 
Union at the time that the law was passed and the invitation ex- 
tended, I will only say that there is no question about her being in 
the Union now, and having the same rights under the laws of the 
Union as every other State. The only people, therefore, who have 
the right to say anything as to whose statues Virginia shall send are 
the people of Virginia themselves, who speak through their repre- 
sentatives in the General Assembly. If Kansas were to choose the 
statue of John Brown to represent her, would Virginia have the 
right to complain ? Certainly not. It is the prerogative of both 
Virginia and Kansas to choose whom they will to represent them, 
and neither has the right to interfere with the choice of the other. 

These are Virginia's places that Virginia is invited to fill as she 
herself shall determine, and no acceptance is necessary beyond the 



mere mechanical act involved. The statue of Washing-ton is already- 
one of the places allotted to Virginia, and as she has the right to 
choose another of her illustrious sons to fill the vacant niche, whom 
shall it be but Lee ? * 

Ah ! but it is suggested by some that we might possibly offend 
Northern sentiment, we might perchance raise a sectional issue, and 
perhaps we had better consult the Secretary of State. Mr. Presi- 
dent, I see no necessity for propriety in such a course. Why should 
Virginia consult the Secretary of State as to whether it will be 
agreeable to him for her to exercise a plain legal right, a right as 
clearly written in the law of the land as her right to choose her own 
representatives in Congress ? It has not been her habit, nor the 
habit of any Southern State to consult any representative of the na- 
tional government about whom they should choose to represent 
them in any capacity, so why should she do it now ? At one time 
there were more ex-Confederates in the United States Senate than 
would have filled the Confederate Senate, and five of them were 
from anti-secession States. Joseph E. Johnston and John B. Gordon, 
generals of the Confederate army, sat in Congress without having to 

*The law on the subject was passed in 1864, and was introduced by Mr. 
Justin S. Morrill, of Vermont. To show that it was intended to apply equally 
to all the States and that there was no thought of excluding any or hamper- 
ing any in making an absolutely free choice of representatives, may be 
quoted the language of Mr. Morrill himself, who said in a speech on the 
occasion when the statue of Lewis Cass was placed in the Hall in 1889: 

" We have much reason to expect the grand old hall will ere long be 
adorned by such notable figures, possibly, as would be that of Benton, from 
Missouri, or those of Charles Carroll and William Wirt, from Maryland; 
Lincoln and Douglas, from Illinois; Grimes, from Iowa; Morton and Hen- 
dricks, of Indiana; Webster, from New Hampshire; Macon, once styled 
"the last of the Romans," from North Carolina; Clay, from Kentucky; 
Calhoun, from South Carolina; William H. Crawford and George M. Troup, 
from Georgia; Austin and Sam Houston, from Texas, and Madisoti and 
Patrick Henry, from Virginia, with a long illustrious list of others easily to 
be mentioned, sufficient to show that our materials to make the hall nation- 
ally attractive are in no danger of being exhausted, but in some States may 
prove embarrassing from their abundance. 

"This truly representative hall, with its fraternal congress of the dead, 
who yet speak in marble and bronze, will tend to increase mutual respect, 
tend to knit us together as a homogeneous people, here united forever in a 
common tribute of high regard to Americans not unknown to fame, and 
designated and crowned by their respective States as worthy of national 
rommemoration. " 



ask the Secretary of State or anybody else whether it was agreeable 
to them, as did also John H. Reagan, a cabinet officer, and Alexan- 
der H. Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederacy, and many 
others distinguished in both the civil and military history of the 
Confederacy. Presidents Harrison and Cleveland appointed ex- 
Confederates to sit on the bench of the Supreme Court, one of them. 
Justice White, still remaining there; and not only have they time 
and again filled with honor and distinction the highest civil positions, 
as cabinet officers, ministers abroad, judges and legislators, in fact, 
every honor short of the presidency — but when war's loud tocsin 
again rang o'er the land, the sons of the South sprang as promptly 
to arms as did the sons of the North, and together they fought and 
conquered the foreign foe. In that conflict the first blood spilt upon 
the altar of his country was that of Worth Bagley, a Southern boy 
and the son of a Confederate soldier. 

President McKinley, that pure-souled patriot whose memory is re- 
vered by all the nation, made Brigadier Generals of two of the Con- 
federacy's most gallant leaders, "Fighting Joe" Wheeler, and our 
own Fitzhugh Lee, and President Roosevelt was proud to serve 
under the first of these at Santiago, when he saved the American 
army from an inglorious retreat, and none of these events was 
accompanied by the falling of any stars from either the firmament 
or the flag. Why then should we suppose that those who have 
worthily honored and applauded the living Confederates would enter 
any protest against due honors by his own State to the most re- 
nowned and glorious of their dead ? Have we not rather far more 
reason to suppose that they will graciously acknowledge that the 
statue of Lee is in its proper place when erected by Virginia at the 
side of that of Washington ? Says the Boston Globe : " If Virginia 
wants to put a statue of Robert E. Lee in the Capitol at Washington) 
instead of a statue of Jefferson, why should the North object ? " 

President McKinley not only recognized the merit of living Con- 
federate soldiers by giving them army commissions in the Spanish 
war, but he also touched the heart of the South by his suggestion 
that the national government should care for the graves of Confed- 
erate as well as Federal soldiers. His words have begun to bear 
fruit, and Senator Foraker, another Northern soldier, is even now 
advocating a bill in Congress, and it has already passed the Senate, 
making provision for headstones over the graves of Confederate 
soldiers buried in the North, and a bill is pending in the Pennsylvania 
legislature to appropriate $20,000.00 towards a statue of General 



8 

Lee at Gettysburg. Colonel A. K. McClure, the author of the bill, 
and one of the broadest minded and most generous hearted of 
America's public men, championed it nobly in a speech of great 
eloquence the other day, and said he did so not to plead the cause 
of the Confederacy, but the cause of the Union. In a letter to me 
about the present bill he says: "It is certainly the right thing for 
Virginia to do." In New York the picture of Lee hangs on the 
walls of the Hall of Fame, and the statue of one ex-Confederate, 
that of John E. Kenna, of West Virginia, already stands in Statuary 
Hall. The portrait of Jefferson Davis, for a time disappearing, has 
reappeared in the War Department among those of the other ex- 
Secretaries without creating any hysterical excitement in the army, 
and so that of General Samuel Cooper, a New Yorker, who became 
adjutant-general and ranking general in the Confederate army, also 
hangs in the War Department. 

A pretty incident showing the change of Northern feeling on this 
subject is related by Mr. Charles Hallock, a Brooklyn gentleman, 
in a recent communication to one of the Richmond papers. In 
1868, he bought a portrait of Lee, by a notable Richmond artist, 
named Anderson, and offered it to be placed on view at the annual 
exhibition of the Brooklyn Art Loan Association. It was contempt- 
uosly refused, with the remark that Lee should have been hung as 
a traitor years before. But note the sequel, which I give in the 
narrator's own language: 

"Now as indicating the rapid amelioration of public sentiment 
which soon followed, and the softening of the acerbities of i86i-'65, 
I will state that in 1875, only ten years after the war, I presented 
this picture to the Long Island Historical Society, of Brooklyn, of 
which the Rev. Dr. Storrs was President, and the Lows, Chitten- 
dens and Pierponts directors, and it was not only gratefully and 
graciously accepted, but was at once placed vis-avis with Gilbert's 
portrait of Washington, in its most conspicuous corridor, and it re- 
mains in that position to this day. Hence if this honor was accorded 
' in the green tree,' what disposition or decision shall obtain at the 
present time, a full third of a century later, when we all exult in a 
unified American history, and wear one common chaplet for bravery 
and heroism ? Are we not brothers ? It seems to me that there 
should be few dissenting voices to the courteous proposal embodied 
in the bill before the Virginia Senate. The precedent which I in- 
stance should have tremendous weight in procuring a decision favor- 
able to placing the Lee memorial in the Capitol hall of Statuary." 



9 

To like effect are the words of President Roosevelt, uttered on 
the 9th of last April, the anniversary of Lee's surrender, at the 
Charleston Exposition, where he said: "We are now a united 
people; the wounds left by the great Civil War, incomparably the 
greatest war of modern times, have healed, and its memories are 
now priceless heritages of honor, alike to the North and to the 
South. The devotion, the self-sacrifice, the steadfast resolution and 
lofty daring, the high devotion to the right as each man saw it, 
whether Northerner or Southerner, all these qualities of the men 
and women of the early sixties, now shine luminous and brilliant be- 
fore our eyes, while the mists of anger and hatred that once dimmed 
them have passed away forever. All of us. North and South, can 
glory alike in the valor of the men who wore the blue, and the men 
who wore the gray." 

Mr. Roosevelt has also written such high praise of Lee, as a 
soldier, that none of his own followers can say more. 

In his life of Thos. H. Benton, in the American Statesman Series, 
on page 34, are found these words: 

"The world has never seen better soldiers than those who fol- 
lowed Lee; and their leader will undoubtedly rank as without any 
exception the very greatest of all the great captains that the English 
speaking peoples have brought forth, and this although the last and 
chief of his antagonists may himself claim to stand as the full equal 
of Marlborough and Wellington." 

It is not my intention at this time to discuss the rights or the 
wrongs of the great fraternal conflict in which Lee won his immortal 
fame. Those questions belong now to history, and any discussion 
of them hereafter must be wholly from the academic and not the 
practical standpoint. It may not be amiss, however, to call atten- 
tion to the fact that the North already admits that the people of the 
South were honest in their contentions, and that they at least thought 
they were right. Furthermore, it is even conceded that the South 
was not without great support for its contentions from legal, moral 
and historical points of view. For instance, Professor Goldwin 
Smith, an Englishman, a distinguished historian, resident of, and 
sympathizing with the North during the Civil War, recently said: 
" Few who have looked into the history can doubt that the Union 
origmally was, and was generally taken by the parties to it to be, a 
compact; dissoluble, perhaps most of them would have said, at 
pleasure, dissoluble certainly on breach of the articles of Union." 



10 

To the same effect, but in even stronger terms, are the words of 
Mr. Henry Cabot Lodge, now a Senator from Massachusetts, who 
said in one of his historical works: "When the Constitution was 
adopted by the votes of States at Philadelphia, and accepted by the 
votes of States in popular conventions, it is safe to say that there 
was not a man in the country from Washington and Hamilton on 
the one side to George Clinton and George Mason on the other, who 
regarded the new system as anything but an experiment entered 
upon by the States and from which each and every State had the 
right peaceably to withdraw, a right which was very likely to be 
exercised." 

As far back as 1887, General Thomas C. Ewing, of Ohio, said in 
a speech in New York: "The North craves a living and lasting 
peace with the South; it asks no humiliating conditions; it recognizes- 
the fact that the proximate cause of the war was the constitutional 
question of the right of secession — a question which, until it was settled 
by the war, had neither a right side nor a wrong side to it. Our 
forefathers in framing the Constitution purposely left the question 
unsettled; to have settled it distinctly in the Constitution would have 
been to prevent the formation of the Union of the thirteen States. 
They, therefore, committed that question to the future, and the war 
came on and settled it forever." 

And right here, let me say, that the South has accepted that 
settlement in good faith, and will forever abide by it as loyally as the 
North, although we will never admit that our people were wrong in 
making the contest. 

This question was calmly and logically discussed by Mr. Charles 
Francis Adams in his speech delivered in Charleston, S. C, on De- 
cember 23rd, last, when he said: 

"When the Federal Constitution was framed and adopted 'an 
indestructible union of imperishable States,' what was the law 
of treason, to what or to whom in case of final issue did the average 
citizen owe allegiance? Was it to the Union or to his State ? As a 
practical question, seeing things as they were then — sweeping aside 
all incontrovertible legal arguments and metaphysical disquisitions — 
I do not think the answer admits of doubt. If put in 1788, or in- 
deed at any time anterior to 1825, the immediate reply of nine men 
out of ten in the Northern States, and of ninety-nine out of a hun- 
dred in the Southern States, would have been that, as between- 
the Union and the State, ultimate allegiance was due to the State. 

* * * * It ^as not a question of law or of the intent of the- 



11 

fathers, or the true construction of a written instrument, for on that 
point the Constitution was silent — wisely — and as I hold it, inten- 
tionally silent. 

" In studying the history of that period we are again confronted 
by a condition and not a theory; but as I read the record, and under- 
stand the real facts of that now forgotten social and political existence, 
in case of direct and insoluble issue between sovereign State and 
sovereign Nation, between 1788 and 1861, every man was not only 
free to decide, but had to decide for himself; and whichever way he 
decided he was right. The Constitution gave him two masters. 
Both he could not serve; and the average man decided which to 
serve in the light of sentiment, tradition and environment. Of this 
I feel as historically confident as I feel of any fact not matter of ab- 
solute record or susceptible of demonstration." 

Mr. Adams is himself a soldier and a gentleman, who shows him- 
self worthy of the Presidential line from which he sprung, by his 
magnanimous appreciation of the valor and manhood of his former 
enemies. In another speech, delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa 
Society of the University of Chicago in June of last year,* he effect- 
ually rebukes those who would apply to Lee the epithet of " traitor," 
and with merciless and faultless logic, demonstrates that if Lee was 
a traitor, "so also, and indisputably, were George Washington, 
Oliver Cromwell, John Hampden and William of Orange," and 
further, that the man who pursued Lee's course after the war "had 
not, could not have had in his whole being one drop of traitor's 
blood or conceived a treacherous thought." 

It is in this speech, which is entitled "Shall Cromwell have a 
Statue?" that he proposes that the Federal Government shall pro- 
vide a site for an equestrian statue of Lee in the city of Washington, 
and shows that the choice of Lee, when he put aside the temptations 
of ambition, place and power (being unreservedly tendered the 
command of the Union forces shortly afterwards held by General 
McDowell), and cast in his lot with his own people, his State, his 
kindred and his home, was the choice of a high-minded gentleman 
and loyal patriot. He then adds these words: 

' ' Whatever differences of opinion may exist as to the course of Lee 
when the choice was made, of Lee as a foe and the commander of 
an army, but one opinion can be entertained. Every inch a soldier, 
he was an opponent not less generous and humane than formidable, 

*See Southern Historical Society Papers, Vol. XXX, pp. 1-33. 

LofC. 



12 

a type of the highest martial character — cautious, magnanimous 
and bold, a very thunderbolt in war, he was self-contained in victory, 
but greatest in defeat. To that escutcheon attaches no stain." 

To the chivalric and the noble of the North, to such men as he 
who wrote these words, the offering of Lee's statue to fill one of 
Virginia's places in that august assemblage of the Nation's great 
will cause no offense or bitterness, but rather the contrary, because 
to the Northern mind, to again use the words of that distinguished 
soldier and scholar, *' It will typify the historical appreciation of all 
that goes to make up the loftiest type of character, military and 
civic, exemplified in an opponent once dreaded but ever respected; 
but above all, it will symbolize and commemorate that loyal acccept- 
ance of the consequences of defeat, and the patient upbuilding of a 
people under new conditions by constitutional means, which I hold 
to be the greatest educational lesson America has yet taught to a 
once skeptical but now silenced world." 

Furthermore, it will again illustrate the fact that the American 
people are one people, and, as in England, the. white rose of York 
and the red rose of Lancaster are entwined together in fragrant 
garlands of fraternal love, and a statue of Cromwell stands in 
the yard of Westminster Hall, where his skull was once exposed 
to insult; as in Mexico, the statues of Viceroy, Emperor, Dicta- 
tor, King and President all stand together, so may we, as citi- 
zens of a common country, unite in honoring the heroes of every 
section who have fought and suffered for what they deemed the right. 
Upon the same granite obelisk at Quebec are engraved the names of 
Wolfe and Montcalm, with this inscription: " Valor gave a united 
death; history a united fame; posterity a united monument," and 
in the hall of the Kremlin at Moscow there stands a grand statue of 
the great Napoleon. Surely, then, the statue of Robert E. Lee can 
stand in the Capitol of his own country without arousing rancorous 
or unkind feelings. 

It is a remarkable fact, Mr. President, that, although nearly a 
month has elapsed since this bill was offered, and that during all 
that time it has been widely discussed, no representative man of the 
North has spoken against it. On the contrary, at least three North- 
ern Republicans, who are as representative of Northern sentiment 
as any who can be selected, have expressed themselves in favor of 
it. Judge Crumpacker can hardly be called an enthusiastic friend 
of the South, and yet he has said that he sees no objection to this 
measure, and that " Lee is Virginia's son and it is for her to decide 



13 

this question as she sees fit." Senator Beveridge says he is inclined 
to favor the idea, and Senator C. M. Depew, of New York, une- 
quivocally gives his approval, and says that when the Union side 
won, "the issue was accepted at once by the defeated side, and I 
think the placing of a statue of General Robert E. Lee in Statuary 
Hall would be an emphatic recognition of the fact that we are all 
now advocates of nationality and its perpetuity. I am heartily in 
favor of receiving the Lee statue."* So that while the North makes 



* As illustrative of the real state of intelligent Northern sentiment may be 
cited the words of Dr. Albert Shaw, the editor of the Review of Reviews, 
who speaks for a large clientele of educated and conservative Northerners, 
and says in the June (1903) number of that well known periodical : 

"The recent session of the Virginia Legislature which made the appro- 
priation to the Jamestown Exposition had been in session a long time, by 
reason of an extraordinary an'ount of business, necessitated by the new 
constitution. The provision of the constitution relating to corporations, tax- 
ation and a great many other important subjects required extensive revision 
of the statutes. The work seems, upon the whole, to have been well carried 
out. Incidentally, one of the enactments of the recent session provided for 
the placmg in the rotunda of the Capitol of Washington a statue of Robert 
E. Lee. It will be remembered that the States are authorized to be repre- 
sented at the Capitol by two of their most distinguished sons. Virginia has 
now decided upon Washington and Lee as her representatives. 

" Virginia's contribution of great men to the constructive period of the 
republic was, of course, unparalleled. To every one must occur promptly 
the names of Washington, Jefferson, Marshall and Madison. But the heart 
of Virginia goes out to Lee as to no other man that the State has ever 
produced. The selection of Lee for the rotunda at Washington caused 
some dissension, because there were those who felt that it might be misun- 
derstood and criticised in the North ; and they preferred that the name of 
Lee should not now be made a subject of controversy. It seemed to many, 
indeed, who have no prejudices, and who revere the character of Robert E. 
Lee, that the thirteen original States should be represented in the rotunda 
at Washington, not by their later heroes, but by earlier men, eminent in the 
forming of the Union. But there can be no just ground for finding fault with 
Virginia's choice. It would be a mistake to assume that the Virginia devo- 
tion to the memory of Robert E. Lee, which amounts almost to idolatry, is 
wholly or chiefly political in its nature and motive. It is not so much that 
Lee personates a movement or a cause, for he was not an original promoter 
or advocate of the secession movement. His place in the hearts of the men 
who knew him and of their descendants has to do with his personality and 
character. The tradition of Lee is that of a Christian gentleman of such 
rare blending of personal courage and genius for leadership with the most 
beautiful qualities of temperament and private character as to make him the 
very flower of American manhood. Robert E. Lee is regarded, in short, 



14 

no objection, it has been left for Virginians to suggest objections 
and to say that we are trying to place a statue of Lee " on Northern 
soil." 

Again, I ask, sir, whose country is this anyway, and whose Cap- 
itol is it in which we propose to place this statue? If any State 
more than another can claim both the country and Capitol for her 
own, that State is Virginia, since seven of the greatest States of the 
Union (not counting either of the Virginias) occupy ground once 
owned by her, but freely given to others for the general good. Is 
Virginia a conquered province, or an equal among her equals in the 
union of the States? Northern soil, indeed ! Take away the part 
that Virginia has played in the foundation and upbuilding of this 
country, and its most glorious memories will be blotted out. When 
we think of the debt of gratitude which this country owes to Vir- 
ginia it seems to me that we, as Virginians, ought indeed to feel 
that we are in "our father's house," and not talk or act as if the 
Federal government were a foreign power and we were in fear of 
straining international relations. 

Forty years seems a long enough probation for Virginia to serve 
in order to prove her loyalty and devotion to the reunited country, 
especially when her sons have shown their willingness to shed their 
blood for it, and to my mind the time has come, if it is ever to come, 
when Virginia should realize and every other State should realize, as 
I believe they do, that in the Union no State has superior rights to 
hers, and that there is no reason why she should hesitate to claim 
her rights more than any other State. 

as the ultimate and final personal expression of the highest and finest ideals 
of public and private Hfe that two centuries of Virginia civilization has 
evolved. 

" It is for reasons of this sort that Virginians wish to place a statue of Lee 
by the side of that of Washington in the rotunda of the national CapitoL 
In making this selection there is no thought in Virginia of belittling the 
greatness of Jefferson on the one hand or of giving offense on the other by 
recalling the terrible strife of forty years ago. Virginia has the good fortune 
to possess a sculptor equal to the work of designing the Lee statue. Mr. 
Edward Virginius Valentine knew him intimately, and made ample studies 
and notes while the great general was still living as president of what is now 
known as Washington and Lee University, after the close of the war. What 
is probably the finest recumbent statue in America marks the tomb of Lee, 
which adjoins the chapel of the University, at Lexington, and Mr. Valentine 
is the sculptor who created this masterly monument. We may be assured^ 
therefore, of a notable Lee statue for the galaxy of great Americans in the 
national Capitol." 



15 

We are not trying' to force the North to honor Lee. We could 
not if we would, and would not if we could, although we believe 
that the time will come when the North will honor him with one 
voice, but we are choosing Lee just as we choose Washington, and 
in so doing only exercise our legal right to choose those characters 
whom vve consider best fitted to represent Virginia in a place where 
every other State may exercise the same privilege without complaint 
or objection from us, and where every State is supposed to send the 
two she deems her greatest and her best. If there be those who 
would deny us this right, then let them understand that they cannot 
do it without denying it to themselves. 

No, Mr. President, there is no sectionalism in the proposition 
contained in this bill, and there should be no sectional prejudices 
aroused by its passage. Sectionalism belongs to the past, and we 
do not now propose to revive it, but simply to recognize and realize 
that it is dead and buried, and that reunion and reconciliation have 
taken its place. Reunion and Reconciliation — these are the watch- 
words now with us who would honor Lee's memory. Reunion and 
Reconciliation, with Peace and Friendship. The aspiration of Grant 
for peace has reached its fulfillment, and in spite of the feelings of 
enmity which may still exist in some "little hearts that know not 
how to forgive," I fondly and firmly believe that now to a greater 
degree than at any time in its history we have the spirit of peace in 
all our country's borders. Unless we have been deceived, the con- 
summation for which Grady prayed has been reached, and we may 
truly see a nation " reunited in the bonds of love, loving from the 
Lakes to the Gulf, with the wounds of war healed in every heart and 
on every hill," Reunion and Reconciliation! Let who will stand 
against them, the stars in their courses are for them, and all the con- 
stellations in the heavens will twinkle when the statue of Lee goes 
to Washington, as Virginia's offering to the Union she helped to 
make and which she stands forever ready to defend! 

I am one of the generation born since the war, but the son of one 
who faithfully followed the fortunes of Lee and his cause for four 
long years, and gloriously fought with him at Gettysburg, and speak- 
ing for the young men of Virginia I unhesitatingly declare that we have 
no bitterness in our hearts towards those who fought our fathers, and 
that to the government that survived the conflict we render loyalty 
and patriotic citizenship, holding it the freest, the grandest, the 
brightest and best of all the empires, kingdoms and republics upon 
which the sun looks down in his circuit through the heavens. We 



16 

breathe the spirit of the new South, of which Grady spoke, but still 
we cling to the memories and the glories of the old South; and we 
have no patience with those in a spirit of time-serving sycophancy 
would deny our heroes or say we are ashamed of the past. We 
feel, too, that if ever the South is to take the place in the Union 
which she is entitled it is upon the old South, that we are to build, 
the old South with its old courtesy, its old chivalry, its old reverence 
for woman, its old courage, its old patriotism, its old fortitude in 
trial, and its old spirit of pride in our history and in our people. 
Yes, I am proud to be a citizen of this great American republic, and 
I am true to my allegiance and faithful to my flag, but at the same 
time I am proud of the State of my birth, and the memories that 
surround her name, and I feel that a young Virginian who does not 
feel proud that he is sprung from a people who fought beneath a 
flag dishonor never touched, is false to his native land — aye false to 
the very stars that shine above her, and false to the God beyond 
them! 

It is not my purpose to attempt a eulogium upon the character of 
Lee. That would indeed be a superfluous task, for already the great 
poets have sung him, and the great orators have praised him in 
words that shall never die, while all the nations of the world, as well 
as his followers and former foes, have acclaimed him as one of those 
who throughout all time shall be held supreme among the greatest 
sons of earth. 

And yet I do desire to again give utterance to a thought which 
has often been expressed by lips far more eloquent than mine, and 
that, to give it in the felicitous language of another, is this: 

" That of the long list of glorious names which America has fur- 
nished to the history of the world, it was our Mother's fortune to 
furnish the two who lead that mighty band — the two characters that 
tower in complete and rounded stature over all their great compa- 
triots, the Castor and Pollux of our nation's history, the ' Great 
Twin Brethren,' who will ride down the centuries leading the van- 
guard of our army of immortality — chiefs of the deathless host of 
patriots, soldiers, philosophers and statesmen, who put life to heroic 
uses and battled for noble ends, the two of this continent incompar- 
able and unrivalled — George Washington and Robert E. Lee." 

Both of them were "rebels." If one is to be condemned for it 
the other must be also, for there is no difierence between them ex- 
cept that the rebellion in which Washington figured was successful, 



17 

while that led by Lee was not. Both of them had held commissions 
under the governments which they afterwards opposed. Washington 
won against the king under whose flag he had served, while Lee lost 
against the country whose battles he had fought. Each " went with 
his State" when the time came when the choice had to be made, 
and the parallel between them is complete, except that one was vic- 
torious and the other vanquished. Is there cause then for crowning 
the one with laurel and the other with thorns ? No — 

" — by the graves, 

Where martyed heroes rest, 
He wins the most who honor saves, 
Success is not the test." 

That is why, then, Mr. President, that I wish to see the statue of 
Lee by the side of that of Washington in Statuary Hall — because 
there are no two great characters in history so much alike as Wash- 
ington and Lee, and because I want the world to know that Virginia 
gives these two noblest and best-beloved of all her sons equal honor 
and equal reverence, and points to them with greater pride than 
that of Cornelia when she pointed to the Gracchi and called them 
her jewels, and dares the world to match them. I want to see them 
together where Virginia can say to all her sister States: 

" These are the two I furnish, produce their equals if you can! "* 

* In a notable speech on Robert E. Lee, which he says was inspired by the 
action of the Virginia Legislature in declaring the purpose to present his 
statue to be placed in Statuary Hall, Judge Emory Speer, a distinguished 
and eloquent Georgian, says: 

" Deny Lee a place by Washington ! Ah, is it sure, if in the awful hour 
when the invading columns approached Virginia's soil, the winds of the 
Prophet had breathed upon the slain that they might live, caught from the 
wall at Mount Vernon by the reincarnated hand of the Father of his Coun- 
try, the defensive blade of Washington would not have gleamed beside the 
sword of Lee ? Repel then not, my country, the fervid love of thy sons who 
fought with Lee, and of the children of their loins. Their prowess thou 
hast seen on the hills of Santiago, on the waters of Luzon. In thy need the 
children of Grant have been and are brethren in arms of the kinsmen ot 
Lee, Officers of his thou hast called to thy service in the highest places in 
peace and war. His comrades and his kinsmen wear thy swords. With 
ioy his sword, too, leaped at thy command. The flowers of spring with 
equal hand thou wilt henceforth strew on graves of all thy dead. Why, 
then, repel his blameless name from thy immortals' scroll ? Then honor 
him and in thy need on those who love him wilt thou not call in vain. And 
woe to the foe in press of battle when the soul of Lee shall fire their hearts 
and his bright sword shall point the charging columns of thy sons." 



18 

To say that Lee needs no statue to honor him is quite beside the 
question. It is because he needs no statue that we want to give 
him one. If we gave monuments onlj'- to those who need them no 
one who is worthy of a monument would ever have one. Already 
have the people of the South built other monuments to Lee than 
the imperishable monument of their love, and now again Virginia 
desires to see her "snow-white chief" stand forth in enduring bronze 
or monumental marble, not as in that peerless figure in Lexington, 
where he lies, " the flower of knighthood," with his eyes closed in 
peaceful, dreamless sleep, but erect and with the fire of battle in his 
eye — that fire which blazed in the fearless face of Arthur when in 
the midst of conflict Sir Lancelot saw him and knew him for the 
King. 

It may be true that we cannot thus give additional honor to Lee, 
but if we cannot honor him we can at least honor ourselves. Old 
Carlyle said: "Who is to have a statue? means whom shall we con- 
secrate and set apart as one of our sacred men. * * Show me that 
man you honor; I know by that symptom better than any other what 
kind of man you yourself are, for you show me there what your 
ideal of manhood is; what kind of a man you long inexpressibly to 
be, and would thank the gods, with your whole soul, for being if 
you could." 

No, we cannot, indeed, give more honor to Lee than is already 
his, but we can at least show to the world the kind of man we want 
to honor, and if we cannot honor him more it is only because, as 
Swinburne sang of Tennyson: 

" Far above us and all our love, beyond all reach of its voiceless praise, 
Shines forever the name that never shall feel the shade of the changeful 

days, 
Fall and chill the delight that still sees winter's light in it shine like May's. 
.Strong as death is the day's dark breath whose blast has withered the life 

we see. 
Here where light is the child of night and less than visions or dreams 

are we ; 
Strong as death ; but a word, a breath, a dream is stronger than death 

could be. 
Strong as truth, and superb in youth eternal, fair as the sundawn's flame, 
Seen when May on her first born day bids earth exult in her radiant name, 
Lives, clothed around with its praise, and crowned with love that dies not, 

his lovelit fame." 



To those who feared that the offering of the statue would arouse 



19 

bitter attacks upon the South in the North, it is a pleasure to be able 
to show that precisely the contrary has been the result. While it is 
true that a few G. A. R. camps have passed resolutions against it, 
the great number of expressions from representative men and news- 
papers in the North, not only of toleration, but of enthusiastic ap- 
proval, have been so numerous and so cordial as to justify the con- 
viction that the movement will be, as it was intended to be, of great 
moment toward strengthening the ties that bind the two great sec- 
tions together in one great patriotic country in which sectionalism 
is lost in nationality. The discussions have been of such a nature 
as to elevate instead of depreciating the estimate of Lee's character 
in the North, for, instead of abuse and vituperation, have been ut- 
tered words of eulogy and of magnanimous appreciation of his great 
attributes. For my part, I have never shared in the apprehensions 
of those who feared that the proposal to send General Lee's statue 
to the Capitol would result in a tirade of abuse against him and the 
Southern people on the part of the North, but have always felt that 
Lee and the South had nothing to lose by discussion, and that the 
more the discussion, the more would his great character shine out 
against the background of disparagement, and the more would the 
world be brought to an appreciation of his greatness and the right- 
eousness of the cause for which he fought. The result has already 
gone far to vindicate this conviction. 

It is impossible, of course, to mention more than a few of the ut- 
terances of Northerners upon the proposition, but it is worth while 
to note that in all the discussion that has ensued not one Northern 
man or periodical of x.epresentative standing has taken ground against 
it. On the contrary, the comments of the Northern press, and of 
Northern men best qualified to voice Northern sentiment, have been 
notably of a most favorable nature. 

Commenting on the Depew interview the Nezv York IVor/d said: 

" Senator Depew measures up to the toga standard when he talks 
about the Lee statue." 

After the bill had become a law, St. Clair McKelway, the famous 
editor of the Brooklyn Eagle, uttered a most eloquent eulogy upon 
Lee in Richmond, and his words were warmly endorsed by Mr. 
Hamilton W. Mabie and Dr. Lyman Abbott, the editors of The 
Outlook, and other prominent Northern men in attendance upon the 
Southern Educational Conference. 

In its issue of July ii (1903), The Outlook said editorially 



20 

" It is hardly possible that any man in the North could have gone 
through the spiritual struggle that Robert E. Lee went through dur- 
ing the days when war was threatened. In the North those men 
that wavered were choosing between a low motive and a high one. 
Robert E. Lee was beset by two conflicting high motives. That he 
chose to follow that high motive which kept him with his State The 
Outlook believes to have been an error of political judgment; but it 
was not a moral error, not even an error of political morality. He 
who is loyal cannot be a traitor, and Lee and the men of his stamp 
were as loyal to their conscientious convictions as were the men who 
fought against them. The test of patriotism, like the test of any 
other moral quality is not success, but loyalty to conviction; and by 
that test Robert E. Lee stands to-day among the purest, though 
among the most tragically misled and misunderstood of patriots. * 
* * If willingness to sacrifice what is passionately prized next to 
honor itself is any criterion as to the degree of patriotism that begets 
such sacrifice, then those Southerners of whom Robert E. Lee is the 
type, are to be counted among the patriots whose lives constitute 
the real riches of the nation." 

Harper' s Weekly said that it could thoroughly understand the 
motives which prompted the Virginia Legislature to pass the bill, 
calling Lee "a great and good man," and saying: 

"The conviction that his State had a right to secede if she chose, 
and that she having done so, it was his duty to uphold her, was 
shared not only by almost all the contemporary statesmen in the 
Southern States, but also by Josiah Quincy and many other New 
England statesmen in the first fifteen years of the nineteenth cen- 
tury. It will, therefore, be as impossible for the future American his- 
torian, however devoted to the Union he may be, to dispute the 
rectitude of Lee's motives, as it will be to belittle his military abili- 
ties." 

In this connection it may be mentioned that the Springfield 
(Mass.) Republican, while thinking the time not yet ripe for the pre- 
sentation of the statue, said, in commenting upon the fact, brought 
out by Mr. Charles Francis Adams in a footnote to his Charleston 
address, that the constitutional right of secession was taught in the 
textbook {Rawle's View of the Constitution^, in use at West Point 
while Lee was a student there: 

" The question immediately arises whether the United States gov- 
ernment had any just grievance against Robert E. Lee, when in 



21 

1 86 1 he put into practice the principles of constitutional law taught 
him as an officer in the United States army." 

The Indiayiapolis Journal, an ultra-Republican paper, said: 

" It is clearly the rightof Virginia to select the statue of Gen. Lee to 
represent that State in that Hall. No one has objected to the repre- 
sentation of other States by statues of the men selected, and no one 
should be so illiberal as to object to Virginia's choice." 

The Chicago Tribime, another pronounced Republican paper, said 
in quite a lengthy editorial: 

" Let Virginia choose the dead she wishes to commemorate. If 
she honors Lee above all but Washington let her place his statue 
in the Capitol. He was a great and good man, although he stood 
by his State instead of the Union. The North as well as the South 
may take pride in this American for the purity of his life and his 
military genius." 

The Washiugto7i Post copied this editorial, and added: 

''That is the broad-gauged American view, the intelligent and 
patriotic view. We believe that nine out of ten of all the men who 
actually fought for the Union will endorse that timely deliverance." 

In the light of such utterances as these, how can any one doubt 
that by sending as one of her two perpetual ambassadors to Wash- 
ington, the image of the man she loves and honors best, and who 
did more than any other to restore good feeling and acquiescence in 
the result of the war, Virginia reflects the greatest possible credit 
upon herself, and offers the finest possible pledge of her national 
patriotism and devotion to the Union ? 

Don p. Halsey. 
January 22, igo^. 



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